Lt Brian Rice, second from left, one of the six members of the Baltimore police department charged in connection to the death of Freddie Gray, arrives to court last week.
Photograph: Patrick Semansky/AP

In another blow to the prosecution of the officers charged in the death of Freddie Gray, a judge acquitted Lt Brian Rice of assault before the defense even presented its case. Judge Barry Williams called another of the remaining three charges “an extremely close call” but stopped short of dismissing it.

The prosecution rested its case Monday against Rice, the highest ranking officer charged in Gray’s death, after questioning several of Rice’s fellow officers.

Rice initiated a chase against Gray, a 25-year-old African American, after Gray began to run upon making eye contact with Rice last April. Gray died a week after that arrest, as a result of injuries he sustained while in police custody, setting off weeks of protests and unrest in the city.

Dropped charge for highest ranking officer in Freddie Gray case

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Williams ruled that he would go forward with most of the charges, including manslaughter, the most serious charge Rice is facing.

But he peppered the prosecution with questions about the theory that Rice assaulted Gray by putting him in the position to come into contact with the walls of the van in which he left unrestrained. “Had he been restrained, the assault would not have happened,” said deputy chief state’s attorney Michael Schatzow.

“You’ve got the driver of the van who pulls away – how are you showing this particular defendant acted in such a way as to cause assault?” Williams asked.

Though he denied the motion to dismiss the other charges, Williams said that even giving the state the benefit of the doubt at this stage, the reckless endangerment charge was an extremely close call. This doesn’t necessarily mean that he cannot later convict Rice of the charge.

The state itself dropped one of the two misconduct in office charges against Rice at the beginning of the trial, conceding they did not have enough evidence to convict him. The judge will decide on the three remaining charges after the defense rests its case and both sides give closing arguments.

The trial continued Monday after a weekend when Baltimore experienced the largest protests to happen in the city since the beginning of these trials 8 months ago. Four were arrested during a large protest which took over downtown streets on Friday night. But few of the speakers even mentioned Rice’s trial and instead rallied around the deaths of Alton Sterling, in Louisiana and Philando Castile in Minnesota.